Eco-friendly Green Cremation

Green cremation is a gentle, eco-friendly alternative to flame-based cremation or casket burials. It is a quiet process that uses water and potassium hydroxide to reduce the body to its basic element of bone ash. The ashes are then returned to the family. The process was adapted for funeral home use by the Mayo Clinic in their anatomy bequest program and is now becoming available to the general public. Bradshaw is the first and only firm in Minnesota to provide this revolutionary service.

Although it's just now becoming available to the general public, Green Cremation is not new. In fact, this process dates all the way back to 1888, when Amos Herbert was granted a U.S. patent for alkaline hydrolysis. More than a century later, in 1998 the University of Florida began using bio-cremation. In 2006, the Mayo Clinic implemented a similar bio-cremation system for use in their anatomy bequest program and proposed a bill to the Minnesota State Legislature to have it approved as a third method of disposition (in addition to burial and flame-based cremation).